‘Cette grande personnalité chrétienne’: the phrase, applied to him by a Swiss theologian, M. Guiran, is rightly fixed upon by M. Loisy in his Mémoires as the mot juste in describing Friedrich von Hügel. In language no less well chosen the same writer has gone on to speak of those ‘valeurs intimes et profondes que M. von Hügel a si magnifiquement et si humblement incarnées.’ For it was indeed not by the construction of a system that von Hügel promoted our understanding of religious experience, nor even chiefly by originating or giving currency to new and fruitful ideas in this department of study, but rather by the impression made by his unforgettable personality upon those who were brought into contact with it, whether through actual conversation or correspondence with him during his lifetime or through the reading of what he wrote and stamped with the peculiar and distinctive style in which that personality found so characteristic an expression. Therefore, while in the case of any thinker who takes as the subject of his lucubrations one which, like religion, must be comprehended, if at all, by an experience in which the whole man is engaged, some acquaintance with his biography will perhaps be found necessary to the understanding of his thought; in the case of such a thinker as he of whom I am now to speak to you it is certainly indispensable.